It's Been a While

So...it's been a while.  All I have to say is...

I'm a total nerd.  With this new and healthy love in my life, I have the chance to enjoy things and pursue passions.

Passions and things of enjoyment include, but are not limited to, the following: Reading.  Writing.  Crochet.  Music.  Harry Potter.  Hunger Games.  Broncos Football.  Garth Brooks.  Batman.  Matt Damon.  Jennifer Lawrence.

"And in what exact moment did you decide you were a nerd?"

I thought you'd never ask.

When I looked down and realized that each article of clothing I'm currently wearing is from a separate fangirl-ism.

My pants are of the Ravenclaw variety.  That was my house until Hogwarts found out I was a muggle and expelled me.

I sport my Broncos hoodie even in the off season.  Even when they are no longer the champs.

Underwear?  Batman.  No judging.

And then the Mockingjay necklace, for protection of course.

The one piece that does not belong to a fandom on me, is my plain as Jane pink t-shirt.

Welcome to my Saturday.

This Girl

This Girl

This girl is happy.  This girl has a man she loves (yes, you read that correctly).  This girl has a man that is totally into her and is not afraid to discuss their future together.  

This girl never doubts herself or the intentions of the people she trusts.  

This girl has talent, and loves to spend time growing her hobby skills.  

She laughs easily, loves quickly, and trusts cautiously.

This girl can reign in her jealousy by letting it go and watching it float away.  Then she smiles and moves forward.

This girl sees everything good and positive about the people and situations that cross her path, and she’s smart enough to recognize a bad one.

This girl can focus, get everything crossed off her to-do in a timely manner, and then do a little extra.

She also has the patience of a saint, and learns from her mistakes instead of stewing in how silly she must have looked making them.

She’s fearless and daring.

She has an open mind and is accepting of all beliefs and backgrounds while she stands firmly and confidently in her own faith of her God.

This is the girl she used to be, and the girl she projected strongly today.  She's been catching glimpses of her every now and then since she's been around my family and friends.  This is the girl she's been trying to rescue for the last several years and almost lost hope for.

This girl is the reason she loves him, her boyfriend.  He’s gently pulling her from the shell of a person she became and helping her catch her breath as she rediscovers herself.

This...is a happy, happy girl.

No Compliments, Please

No Compliments, Please

Today was a good day, a hundred shades different from yesterday.  No Doubt, just confidence in myself was all I had room for.  

I found out today that I don’t take compliments well.  Doesn’t mean I don’t like them, I just don’t know what to do with one when it’s handed to me.  

We have meetings on Tuesday mornings that last for about forty-five minutes.  The manager addresses us as a whole, then we break off into groups.  Receptionists and billing (that’s me), often convene together after the breakout, and then there’s optical, and the technicians who have their own meetings.  Today, during the first part where everyone is sitting in a big circle in the waiting room (doctors included), my boss complimented me on how well I’m doing without my co-biller there.  It’s the first time I’ve had the entire billing department, and its responsibilities, to myself and have had to balance the flow of money for the company, but apparently I’m doing it.  I AM doing it, but I kind of looked at the ground when she addressed me like that, like I’m not worthy of the recognition.  

It’s not true, I am worthy because I’m tearing it up over there.  It’s not perfect, but it’s way better than I had anticipated, and now I know the job much, much better and could easily do it again if I had to.

I’m not sure if it’s my humble upbringing that gave me the unease of accepting a compliment...but it was more than that really.  

Church has always taught me to be humble, but there is a difference between being humble and feeling humiliated.  It’s not anyone’s fault but my own, and my suspicion is that I got it from my ex.  He was always incredibly embarrassed whenever someone complimented him, always had to have a sarcastic comment about it, always had to tell me all of the reasons why he didn’t deserve it.  And I had to remind him of all the reasons why he did (they were there), but he always always countered my reason for one from his ever growing “this is why I don’t” list.  It was exhausting and depressing and part of that rubbed off on me.  I allowed it to. It’s part of the grime on the window that Doubt keeps slinging mud at.

Anyway, I did observe this about myself, but I didn’t let it get to me.  My mind noted it, and moved on, and I had an incredibly productive day.  I also took a flying leap of a chance with my boyfriend, because I felt I was mentally and emotionally in the right place to do so, and everything turned out great.  Doubt was there, but she was the tiniest of voices in my ear.  One that I could squash by the time I saw him this evening.  

Progress is great when you can see it, and a lot of times it’s there even if you can’t.  Perseverance, determination...these are all things my teachers taught me in elementary school.  Important things that I’ve forgotten and am on track to regain, and it feels great :).

~Heather

Doubting Day

Doubting Day

Today was a doubting day.  Everything thing I did, I second guessed myself or the intentions of others.  I know feelings like these are getting in the way of my relationships, but really there is only one person I care enough about that I will tame this natural flaw.  (Aside from family, of course.)  

I’m so insecure that when my boyfriend and I go a whole day with only one or two texts, and Doubt has a firm grim on my day, I immediately jump to the conclusion that he needs space from me and might be doubting us, needing distance from me. (Talk about projection!)

On the better days when I feel like I can conquer the world, the “silence” wouldn’t bother me, especially since he had checked in this morning.  Logic and Security would tell me, “He cares so much that he wants to check in with you, even though you didn’t initiate it, and that’s plenty.”

We’re both busy and tired; he knows these past six or so weeks have been especially exhausting for me because I’ve been training for my coworker’s job while she takes a well-deserved and incredibly overdue week and a half vacation with her family.  I’m happy to do this for her, of course, that’s what I’m there for.  It doesn’t make it any less stressful, and he’s aware of this.  On these days, I’m happy that we’re both secure enough to find a single text that day perfectly okay.

The longer I stay away from my ex and his family, the clearer my secure side becomes.  Doubt is always there to play, but I feel like I’ve been scrubbing at a grubby, dirt-encrusted window to be able to see this aspect of myself again.

“You know I’m always going to be here,” Doubt lobs a big mud ball at my window as I scrape and scrape the crusties from it.

I can see through it now, though it’s still a little grimy.  They're blurry but the features are becoming distinguishable.

Anyway, today was full of second guessing and it took writing this entry to realize that even though Doubt brought her A game today, I’m still making progress.  I’m still healing and recovering, and that’s what counts.

I understand why this would drive people to a distance, because I don’t have much to offer while I go through this.  Some people are great at projecting one feeling while something totally different is stewing or storming inside them.  I’m not one of those people.  What you see is what you get and chances are if you aren’t seeing something, you wouldn’t want to anyway.  I focus my energy into surviving and healing on the inside, it doesn’t really leave room for a personable, bubbly woman.  Sometimes I am, but most of the time I need to be focused.

I’m getting better at controlling the way I see myself and others.  It was really hard at first, I’d had to give that up for my ex because it was one of few ways I could connect and communicate with him.  It was a lot of sacrifice for little pay out, but it worked sometimes and at one point, I saw it as “progress”.  What I didn’t realize was that it wasn’t progress so much as complete compromise of myself.  He would have never done the same for me, because he was totally incapable of it.  He’s not the only one, plenty of people are like that but it was literally killing my spirit.  It wasn’t healthy for me.

I only saw this recently...as recently as I’m writing this because I’m now with someone who is willing to make sacrifices to keep me.  Big ones.  Unfair ones.  And it threw me completely off, experiencing that from the receiving end.  I’d always been the one to sacrifice, the only one to compromise and still come up short.  

My ex always asked things of me that he would never have done if I’d been the one asking.  Giving up my friends, and for his mom that also meant giving up my family, even though they wouldn’t accept me into theirs.  

If you were to ask them, they would sing a different tune and they’d have perfect pitch, but that’s an experience for another time.

Point is, because my someone is treating me the same way I would treat him, I’m able to rediscover parts of myself that I thought were dead.  Aspects that I never thought I’d see again.

Anyway, that’s where I stop, mostly because I’ll go off on another tangent about something I’m not quite ready to bring up yet.  

Have a nice day/night wherever you are :)

~Heather

Productivity is Key

Today was productive.  Today I paid a bill, hung up my wall decor, and finished laundry.  That’s productive for me.

Today I also scraped my ex mother in law’s face off of some glass.  Does that sound a little dark?  It surprisingly didn’t give me feelings of any kind.  I’ve been putting it off for quite some time; I moved into this apartment almost two months ago and have been unpacked for about half that time.  

It took me a while to go through some of the more sentimental stuff.  Pictures, poems, letters.  When I got around to the pictures, some of them had been in the same frame for so long that I could only peel part of the print from the frame glass...and that is how my ex mother in law’s face ended up against my living room wall for the better part of a month.  

But today, I scraped it all of.  It took all of my rubbing alcohol and several hours, but now the last photo I took with my great grandmother stands in its place with scrap material as its backing.  

It wasn’t hard for me to move on, honestly, not as hard as other people have described leaving their significant others.  I suppose the fact that he was the one that kicked me out had something to do with that...and that I couldn’t find the strength or energy to take care of him constantly the way he needed.  There was no growing from his mistakes, no fixing his actions and behaviors to help our problems.  I was always expected by him and his family to conform with his impossible contours.  Even a contortionist would have found it difficult.  

I expected that scrubbing free her face from the frame glass would either be incredibly satisfying, or mildly upsetting.  I made the choice not to go back to him, but it was still hard for me to throw out all of the memories.  However, I didn’t feel a thing today, like it was just another project that needed to be done.

I will never name any names in this blog.  As much as I’ve been hurt by certain people, I’d still like to respect their anonymity.  

Therapy

When I think about the future, there are always two versions of the same situation.  Like when I think about the future with my boyfriend, there’s a version that makes my heart explode with happiness because I’ve finally found a man who can take care of me the way I need, and is brave enough to trust me to reciprocate.  A version that makes me impatient and excited to throw the big “L” word at him.

The other version is a little grungy, hardly ever happy, mostly tolerating each other’s presence.  Content with the days we say nothing to each other and dreading the days we do, because it will only end in an argument and hurt feelings.  We shuffle around the house, mostly from the T.V. to the kitchen and back, before I go to bed first and he follows several hours later.  In this version, we’re both so exhausted and unhappy with our jobs that we can’t help but take out our frustration on each other.  This is the version that makes me afraid of the day I spit the big “L” word at him, because there’s no taking it back.  This anxiety doesn’t make the fact untrue, just makes me afraid of the truth.

That’s why I love him, but I haven’t been able to physically say the word.  Doubt is a dangerous thing.

“I’m just a big kid,” he says, taking a half second from Call of Duty to grin over me, “life with me will be all joking around and...ah damn,” he’d been hit with a grenade.

I giggled as he re spawned on a different area of the game map.  

I’m not a giggler and never really have been, but with him I’ve turned into one.  It’s one of very few girly things about me aside from my girlish figure.  I hardly ever wear makeup because my skin is too sensitive, I can’t even use over the counter lotions.  I pluck my eyebrows when I think about it or I notice they’re ridiculous, but they’re crooked anywa because of the oven cleaner I splashed on the tip of my left one when I was seventeen and worked cleaning vacant apartments for Colorado State University.  

I do some girly crafts like crochet and sew.  My crochet skills are increasing, however my sewing skills have remained at a steady plateau of about a two out of ten.  

He’s a nerd, particularly knowledgeable in the areas of Star Trek and Star Wars.  He loves watching T.V. and new movies, but he loves to game.  He’s also a handyman at the University, which is where I met him almost eleven years ago; working for my dad maintaining the very apartments I was hired to clean.  

“What’s new, kiddo?” he’d say when he walked into the apartment I was cleaning.  I loved that, him having a name for me.  I’m sure he talked to any of the other teenage hourlies the same way, but none on my team.  I loved, and still think about, the days I used to find him replacing the laminate flooring, or painting, in a vacant apartment and help him for an hour or two.  Mostly I’d just watch, but I’d fill nail holes for him, or grab him a tool from across the room he’d need.

The skill set he’s learned from his continuing time there is incredibly valuable and downright sexy.  The man is completely renovating his own tri-level house by himself.  The wiring, plumbing, and everything is done by him and his dad.  

He’s also significantly older than me and has been single for the same amount of time I was married.  He’s set in his ways and I’m set in some of mine, though most have been upturned since I’ve had to once again figure out how to live on my own.  

I’m incredibly happy with him as I’m thinking about all of this.  Most of the time I’m with him, even while we’re watching a movie, I’ll fantasize about a life with him where we have his cat and my two, his house is finished, and there’s an infant in my arms, and maybe a little kid playing in the next room over.  I look at my clock, see that it’s 8:30 or 9 and smile sweetly over at him, a silent request to put the other one to bed.  

When I think about our future, the outlook is usually really, really good.  But there’s always that doubt there, always that devil whispering in my ear that it’s not everything it seems.  That he’s hiding something, he’s pulling the reigns on his normal behavior to trap me or he’s got another girl on the side.  I’m waiting for something to rear it’s ugly head, though I’d rather it all be in my paranoid head.

This blog isn't about making money, or gaining followers or readers. This blog's purpose is not to entertain, brag, or evoke pity. This blog is about getting out of my head every little damaging thing that has been going through it for the last six plus years.

Welcome to my version of therapy.